


Five Things

by archbishopmelker



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 01:01:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archbishopmelker/pseuds/archbishopmelker





	Five Things

Five Things

5

Rise.

Commands the monster, to the thing it has created. 

But the thing does not.

The thing imagines that

4

it still lies burning, an animal broken and burning and dying. Or viewed from a different perspective a heavy huge ball of red wire, a hopelessly tight-knotted tangle of what ought to have been such wonderful stuff. And so much of it. This stuff so bright and strong and spun so fine, finer than the gap between moments, than the line between fire and the thing that is burning.

And the thing that is burning looks up at the better warrior and says--starts to say--tries to say--

Something never to be told, as before the burning thing can speak its head is severed from its body by the victor's weapon, by minor mercy, and rolls into the fire, and burns.

And even if he could speak, now, well, after witnessing that he would really only be able to laugh instead. The whole thing's such a fantastic comedy, once you step back a bit. 

And even as the red wire happily untangles and stretches itself back out to its proper dimensions, extends with cat-stretch and Sunday morning yawn beyond the stink and heat of this silly little universe, it could be that one last unravelling strand of it that is still vaguely human almost wishes that

3

the child looks up at this trusted adult, asking, what are we supposed to do? 

The angle, the tilt of head required to do this, make eye contact, makes it very easy for the adult to decapitate the child.

The rest of the children observe, and the adult watches them adapt to this new information, meet the fresh challenge of his treachery, with a coolness he cannot imagine himself ever having, when he was their age, or now, or when he will be old. They watch their friend die with a calm he envies, and he hates them for it, hates every one of these children so much.

The little head, rolling, hits some obstacle with a soft wet hollow sound.

The adult lowers his weapon. Sits down on the floor, cross-legged, beside the body.

The children leave him sitting there. They have a fight to fight.

***

The ensuing period of disorder, the months and years that the galaxy devotes to various flavours of chaos, he spends incarcerated, though only halfheartedly--it is understood by all involved that if he actually wanted to escape, he would escape, from anywhere, from anything, and in these times there are so few resources to spare. There is no cathartic elaborate trial, and no cry for an execution, the bloodthirsty having found better things to do with themselves in these interesting times.

Padme comes to see him as often as she reasonably can. She makes the effort, travels to the desert where they have banished him, comes to this place that he has gone to willingly.

She comes to observe him. He can see this, of course, it is as plain as the sand and the sun. How mad is he this time? They are wise to want to know.

She stays near him, when she visits, but never too near, and always (he can see this of course) aware of the shortest path to the closest exit. 

She stays always neutral, beautiful, untouchable, unbearable--a queen on her throne, an angel in the air--though she bravely lets the children run free.

The boy child is bright and blonde and runs to him and always says father as though it is the most important word in a long and well-known prayer.

The girl child looks a lot like her mother. And when she has grown older she walks like her mother. And she does not often choose to walk to him.

How mad am I this time? he wonders, and watches the boy play and waits in vain for some assassin to remember his existence, realize the need to end it, as equilibrium slowly reasserts itself throughout the galaxy. 

He watches Luke laugh as he chases a leather ball, and he remembers, as clear as now, the little head rolling across the cold clean floor. And he laughs along with this sunny boy child, under the burning sun, but it's a thin sick cold night laugh, and the girl child scowls at him. So he stops laughing, for her sake, and thinks to himself (he hopes only to himself) that

2

out on the sand in the dark all alone is the first time he truly feels as though he had never left this place. Never been bought by a Jedi knight. Never been freed from slavery.

Except that now he has weapons, and power, and skill, and the smell of dead flesh makes him hungry.

Except that now as never in Mos Eisley everything is still and silent. At least until in cold dawnlight a little creature comes scuttling out of hiding to clutch at one of the bodies. The cold bodies. To say--something--as though it were part of a prayer, as though they could have prayers.

He raises his weapon and prepares to destroy the little thing.

And the little thing sees him, and screams in terror. 

The thing.

The child.

And he pauses in slaughter, seeing, just for a moment the childishness of it, the innocence undeniable even in all its savagery.

And he knows she would not want him to do this for her.

And he knows he should never have left.

And he brings his weapon down upon the thing. 

He knows what he's doing. And

1

he knows what he has to do. 

He has to win this race, to save his angel (and of course the others) from--something. Some great frightening thing that he can't quite understand, but then he doesn't need to. Doesn't need to understand a thrown stone to avoid it. Doesn't need to understand electricity, resistance, power.

He knows how things work.

He knows where things are, and where they have been, and where they will be.

Take for example this moment. Take for instance this race.

He doesn't understand why his hand twitches at the controls, just now. Why his concentration falters. Why he will do and is doing and has done this one little wrong thing. Why, in the instant after this one, metal and rock and flesh will be attempting to occupy the same co-ordinates in spacetime.

He knows all that matters, which is that rock will win.

He knows, also, even in the instant before it happens, that his inconsequential death will be almost too quick for pain.


End file.
